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audio skipping, slow performance

Recently, my computer began to boot up extremely slowly, and when it finally booted, I would get a pop up window saying that Zone Alarm was initializing and that would stay up for several minutes, then things would open normally. After this had gone on for a few weeks, I decided to uninstall and reinstall Zone Alarm and Avast. When I did this, I no longer got the "initializing" screen for ZA, but I noticed my computer seemed to be bogged down much worse than before. If I'm listening to any audio--it doesn't matter how, it can be Winamp, Youtube, any and all sounds/audio--I get this annoying "skipping" sound that sounds similar to a CD skipping every 10-20 seconds or so. I don't think this is just audio-related, as if I open Notepad and hold down a key, I can see the text "skip" at the same time the audio does. Also, in Chrome when I open a new tab, there is often a long delay before it will load the page. In addition, I have noticed Youtube videos seem to load extremely slowly, much slower than they do on my phone which is using the same wi-fi connection. And, sometimes there will be VERY long delays between when I click on a program or a folder and when it opens.

I have uninstalled any unnecessary programs, I have limited start-up process to the bare minimum, but nothing helps the problem. One other side effect is that Malewarebytes would never start up. I could install it, update it, but it wouldn't open. I used Spybot and Avast to scan my computer and they didn't find any issues other than (with Spybot) a few browser entries.

I was talking to my brother and he recommended Combofix, so I ran that (now reading this forum, I realize I wasn't supposed to do that without someone telling me to...sorry). After running it, Malewarebytes opened! I thought the problem was solved, but no, I still have the same issues. The only thing that has been fixed is Malewarebytes now opens.

So, I'm turning to the forum. Below and attached is the information requested in the "Preparation Guide For Use Before Using Malware Removal Tools and Requesting Help" thread. By the way, when I was running the rootkit scan, all the boxes above "services" were greyed out, so I could not select them. If I did something wrong and should re-run it, please let me know. If you would like to see my initial Combofix log, let me know as well. I greatly appreciate any help.

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Welcome to Bleeping Computer. My name is m0le and I will be helping you with your log.

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Please avoid installing/uninstalling or updating any programs and attempting any unsupervised fixes or scans. This can make helping you impossible.

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Once I receive a reply then I will return with your first instructions.

Thanks for your response, M0le. Yes, I am here and I have a few updates since my initial post.

I'm starting to wonder if this is a hard disk problem. When I was backing up my files last weekend, I received an I/O device error when copying a few mp3 files. I stopped the copy process and started it over again, skipping my music folder. At various times I would check on the progress and see it was copying at a very low speed, sometimes under 1 MB/sec. I started it over a few times and it would speed back up and eventually finished. I never did end up finishing the music folder (I've backed it up previously so I'm not worried about it).

The other day, I started up my computer, gave it some time to boot, then tried to start Chrome and it froze for a minute or 2, then I got a blue screen error and a reboot. When the system came back up, I did scans with Malewarebytes, Spybot and Avast. MWB found nothing, Spybot found a few browser cookies, and Avast found nothing, but it did say that two files could not be scanned because of I/O device error 1117. The two files were the same mp3 files for which I received the error when trying to copy over the weekend.

When I was at work on Friday, I had my wife run a disc check for me. I couldn't be there to see everything that went on, but she reported a few things:

4 times: file record segment 106208 (different number for each one) is unreadable
4 bad file records processed
deleted an index entry from index $0 of file 25
deleted the index entry of at least one of the mp3 files I had a problem with

Ran the check a second time and it didn't find any problems. Afterwards, the system is running much faster, but I still have the audio skipping problem. That's where I currently stand. I will refrain from making any changes or doing any scans unless you direct me to. Thanks for your help!

Double-click on mbam-setup.exe to install the application or, if you are using Vista, right-click and select Run As Administrator on mbam-setup.exe to install the application.

When the installation begins, follow the prompts and do not make any changes to default settings.

When installation has finished, make sure you leave both of these checked:

Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

Then click Finish.

MBAM will automatically start and you will be asked to update the program before performing a scan. If an update is found, the program will automatically update itself. Press the OK button to close that box and continue.
If MBAM won't update then download and update MBAM on a clean computer then save the rules.ref folder to a memory stick. This file is found here: 'C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware' then transfer it across to the infected computer.

On the Scanner tab:

Make sure the "Perform Full Scan" option is selected.

Then click on the Scan button.

If asked to select the drives to scan, leave all the drives selected and click on the Start Scan button.

The scan will begin and "Scan in progress" will show at the top. It may take some time to complete so please be patient.

When the scan is finished, a message box will say "The scan completed successfully. Click 'Show Results' to display all objects found".

Click OK to close the message box and continue with the removal process.

Back at the main Scanner screen, click on the Show Results button to see a list of any malware that was found.

Make sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.

When removal is completed, a log report will open in Notepad.

The log is automatically saved and can be viewed by clicking the Logs tab in MBAM.

Copy and paste the contents of that report in your next reply and exit MBAM.

Note: If MBAM encounters a file that is difficult to remove, you may be asked to reboot your computer so it can proceed with the disinfection process. Regardless if prompted to restart the computer or not, please do so immediately. Failure to reboot normally (not into safe mode) will prevent MBAM from removing all the malware. MBAM may make changes to your registry as part of its disinfection routine. If you're using other security programs that detect registry changes, they may alert you after scanning with MBAM. Please permit the program to allow the changes.

And here's the SuperAntiSpyware log. When I clicked "remove infected items," it began doing so fairly quickly, but then around 70 percent, it slowed down tremendously, removing an item every 15-20 (maybe more) seconds or so. Is that normal?

The removal isn't complete but I did save the log before it started, so here it is. If there are any changes after it completes, I'll post that tomorrow:

There hasn't been much change since doing these scans. The biggest difference-maker was running the disk check last week. The machine has been running much better since then, but still has the audio skipping at pretty much the same frequency. I'm wondering if it's a case where the hard drive is going bad and I need to replace it. What do you think?